Re: hot boxes and power consumption
On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Johann Koenig wrote:
> > Does anyone have any information or methods which might determine what
> > a"typical" computers power consumption might be?
Well, I found that when we moved to P4/CeleronP4 systems at the office
here, that our APC 280VA battery backups just aren't powerful enough
anymore. One nice way to find out your power usage, is to stick your
computer on a battery backup that has reporting(such as a BackUps Pro)
and ask it how much power it's using(upsc localhost, if you have NUT
installed and working)
I was just testing a battery backup here(well, 6 of them) and a P120 with
an old video card and no hard drive pulls about 55 va. Your current may
vary, no warranty express or implied.
A P4/2.53, with 2 200 gig, and 2 120 gig maxtors, 3ware 7500-4, Antec
SX635 case, and misc other equipment is pulling 171 VA at idle, and 255
at load(running a gzip on some files). At 24/7(which it is), this thing
would cost us about $ 13 a month at residental rates, I'm not sure what
we pay for industrial electricity.
So if you're concerned about heat and your power bill, shut off
anything like seti@home, dnet, etc that runs your CPU at high load.
OT: Whatever you do, don't believe APC's online power estimator. I find
it's off by a factor of two, a battery backup we have(Smart 1000XL with a
UXBP24 battery pack(basically it's 4 car batteries inside a housing)) is
supposed to last about 5-6 hours according to them at the load we have,
it actually makes it to about 3. APC claims it's because we're using
power bars, which makes me wonder how my power bars are dissipating almost
400 watts of heat without melting down. ;)
OT: I'm actually moving all my home machines into my bedroom, as that's
the room that is actually air conditioned, I have my living room blocked
off from the rest of the bedrooms. Noise doesn't bother me much, as I'm
profoundly hard of hearing anyways!
Mike
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